Bedfordshire Police has explained what went wrong when its Facebook Q&A session for Leighton-Linslade didn't go to plan.

On Sunday, Leighton Buzzard Community Policing Team announced that it would be holding a live video chat on Monday between 3pm and 5pm and invited the public to take part.

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However, the force faced some IT gremlins, and at 3.42pm it posted an announcement to say that it faced technical issues and asked participants to direct message them because the video wasn't working.

A Bedfordshire Police spokeswoman, said: "This was a trial run – we have already run a Facebook Live event for the Bedford Community Policing Team. However that event was hosted from Police Headquarters where we have better technical capabilities.

"This time we wanted to try running a Facebook Live from another station because ultimately it will be officers who are out and about who will be doing this, and unfortunately technology let us down.

"This was solely down to issues with the technology available on officers’ laptops and mobile devices – obviously we don’t know if this will work until we try. Because of that, we did take questions over direct message and those messages included concerns about motorists using mobile phones while driving and how to submit intelligence to the force.

"We are looking to do it again, but obviously we need to make sure the correct IT is in place. We ran the Leighton Buzzard and Bedford Community Policing Team trials because eventually we’d like to start using Facebook Live at things like community priority setting meetings so people can ask questions from home.

"We recognise that some people aren’t able to come to the meetings because of other commitments, but still want to have an input into how we police their community and hopefully this technology will allow them to do that."